Speaker 1: Imagine a digital currency that can be traded throughout the
Speaker 1: Internet that was linked to gold. This is what the
Speaker 1: digital Gold Bank is all about.
Speaker 2: Gold, the glinting promise of treasure that drove people from
Speaker 2: all around the country and the world to Australia back
Speaker 2: in the eighteen fifties during our gold rush, the influx
Speaker 2: of prospectors, helping to shape our country into the multicultural
Speaker 2: nation we now know. The precious metal is sometimes tilted
Speaker 2: as a recession proof investment, But what Alan metcalf is
Speaker 2: talking about in this YouTube video is not physical gold.
Speaker 2: It's a digital concept gold that you can't see or touch,
Speaker 2: but which can be bought and traded entirely online. More significantly,
Speaker 2: this scheme is the first evidence I find of Alan's
Speaker 2: money going overseas.
Speaker 1: Digital monetization means that through the safe world system, we
Speaker 1: can turn products and services into digital currency. Combined digital
Speaker 1: monetization with gold, and instantaneously we have a way to
Speaker 1: restore and sustain the credibility of the world economy. We
Speaker 1: also have a safe haven to hold the retirement savings
Speaker 1: of the world.
Speaker 2: Everything Alan has just said seems a bit insincere to me,
Speaker 2: a bit like fool's gold. He can't have seriously believed
Speaker 2: it that his bank was going to single handedly kickstart
Speaker 2: the world economy and become a one stop shop for
Speaker 2: people to invest their retirement money. But it was becoming
Speaker 2: harder to squeeze more money out of investors, so in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, Alan came up with this wild plan. This
Speaker 2: was the latest add on to his original Safe World's concept,
Speaker 2: which was already ambitious and confusing enough for investors. Now
Speaker 2: Safewolds was going to have its own currency and bank
Speaker 2: was called Digital Gold. Alan claimed to have the minus touch.
Speaker 2: His Digital Gold Bank would be a safe place for
Speaker 2: investors to store their money and watch it prosper, but
Speaker 2: it was also a haven of another type, a tax haven.
Speaker 2: Alan had started the business sixteen thousand kilometers away at
Speaker 2: a place known as the Cayman Islands. I'm Alex Turner Cohen,
Speaker 2: a finance and investigative reporter from US dot com dot AU,
Speaker 2: and you're listening to the Missing forty nine Million. This
Speaker 2: is episode six Safe Haven.
Speaker 1: I am in Grand Cayman Island today and have just
Speaker 1: taken the first step towards establishing the Digital Gold Bank.
Speaker 2: This is the artificial intelligence program that we've been using
Speaker 2: throughout the series to recreate Alan's voice. Ai Allen is
Speaker 2: reading out an email that real Alan sent hundreds of
Speaker 2: shareholders in April twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Today, I incorporated the Cayman's company Digital Gold Standard. The
Speaker 1: company can't be called the Digital Gold Bank until it
Speaker 1: acquires a banking license.
Speaker 2: I'd vaguely heard of the Cayman Islands before I started
Speaker 2: this treasure hunt. It is located in the Caribbean and
Speaker 2: as a British overseas territory with a population of about
Speaker 2: sixty eight thousand citizens. The Grand Cayman is its biggest island,
Speaker 2: and its sanswept beaches and golden sunrises are popular with tourists.
Speaker 2: But that's not the main thing the Caymans are known for.
Speaker 2: It's heaven for tax dodgers. The Cayman Islands is ranked
Speaker 2: as the greatest enabler of corporate tax abuse and topped
Speaker 2: the Haven score ranking according to analysis done by campaign
Speaker 2: group Tax Justice Network. Allan didn't shy away from its reputation,
Speaker 2: though Later in the email, he said.
Speaker 1: Why has this new company been incorporated in Grand Cayman
Speaker 1: Because it needs to be an international entity that can
Speaker 1: operate globally without conflicting taxation interests. This does not mean
Speaker 1: that we are seeking to avoid paying taxation. We simply
Speaker 1: need to avoid paying double taxation. There is nothing illegal.
Speaker 3: In this move.
Speaker 2: He goes on to say he had legal advice on
Speaker 2: the issue. It's taken me ages to work out exactly
Speaker 2: what this part of his business was up to. What's
Speaker 2: helped is that Allan made several YouTube videos, so I've
Speaker 2: pieced some of it together.
Speaker 1: Most honest economists today now agree that the world economy's
Speaker 1: current woes all started when Richard Nixon removed the Goal
Speaker 1: standard in nineteen seventy one. Debt and the systematic destruction
Speaker 1: of the world economy has been out of control since
Speaker 1: that time. Consequently, people everywhere now live in the hope
Speaker 1: of somehow restoring the Goal's standard. Share this hope.
Speaker 2: It sounds sketchy when I look into it, though. Experts
Speaker 2: do seem to agree that President Nixon's decision to delink
Speaker 2: the US dollar from gold are sho in a new
Speaker 2: era of instability. I'm intrigued now, so I mine for
Speaker 2: more information. One Safeworld's investor sends me a document titled
Speaker 2: Digital Gold Standard investment memorandum. This booklet outlines Alan's plans
Speaker 2: for his alternate currency. In it, Alan said he.
Speaker 1: Wanted to create a digital economy for the world that
Speaker 1: is backed by gold.
Speaker 2: That's Alan's AI voice again. His memorandum to investors.
Speaker 1: Continued, we will provide the way to monetize gold and
Speaker 1: silver and turn these valuable physical assets into an everyday
Speaker 1: common electronic currency. We will also be re establishing the
Speaker 1: gold standard that once existed and served the world economy.
Speaker 2: So well, this is all getting a bit weird for me.
Speaker 2: People try maraid gold and silver futures all the time,
Speaker 2: meaning they already effectively function as an everyday common digital currency.
Speaker 2: There was more. His digital gold was going to be
Speaker 2: an alternative to PayPal, Alan said, and he even went
Speaker 2: a step further and planned to issue his users with
Speaker 2: their own gold paid debit card. Alan had a mock
Speaker 2: up and everything in the information booklet showing the shiny
Speaker 2: debit card he was proposing. He only needed a small amount,
Speaker 2: he said, eight million dollars to get his gold bank
Speaker 2: off the ground, and gold and silver would be purchased
Speaker 2: with any leftover money. The best part, those who had
Speaker 2: already invested might be able to convert their shares into
Speaker 2: something real for the first time gold.
Speaker 1: We're also aware of the increasing interest among investors to
Speaker 1: roll over their existing stock market holdings into gold and
Speaker 1: or silver. Converting retirement accounts into gold and or silver
Speaker 1: accounts is increasingly popular.
Speaker 2: Shares for this digital gold standard were selling for just
Speaker 2: zero point zero one CeNSE each. The minimum investment was
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars. He was selling them the same way
Speaker 2: as Safe World shares, through a bank transfer to a
Speaker 2: US or Australian account. Allan said people were already interested
Speaker 2: in asking questions.
Speaker 1: If Safe World's TV shares are so valuable, why is
Speaker 1: the company selling lots in this offer at such a
Speaker 1: low price. Because early stage funding is valuable. Investors who
Speaker 1: are prepared to invest at the early stage of business
Speaker 1: establishment expect and should get rewarded over and above what
Speaker 1: later stage investors receive. The company is exploring the opportunity
Speaker 1: to use our superior technology to produce a private and
Speaker 1: secure digital wallet to support the goalpaid debit card.
Speaker 2: Okay, this part I recognize it sounds like some of
Speaker 2: the cryptocurrency schemes that have become huge in recent years.
Speaker 2: They're a kind of digital payment system similar to what
Speaker 2: Alan is pitching, and since launching, cryptocurrencies have been wildly volatile.
Speaker 2: Alan even reference Bitcoin the world's biggest cryptocurrency later on
Speaker 2: in the INFOMEMO.
Speaker 1: In an electronic economy, electronic money is required. Because of this,
Speaker 1: we now see an increasing number of digital currencies being
Speaker 1: created and aggressively promoted to exploit this reality. Among these,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is probably the most well known. The problem with
Speaker 1: all the cyber currencies that are currently available is that
Speaker 1: they are not universal in nature, They are proprietary, and
Speaker 1: in some cases, like Bitcoin, their origin is unknown.
Speaker 2: He's right. Bitcoin's origin is kind of unknown. It was
Speaker 2: set up in two thousand and nine by someone calling
Speaker 2: themselves to Toshi Nakamoto, only no one really knows who
Speaker 2: Nakamoto is. Apart from that, Bitcoin is pretty well established
Speaker 2: as a transparent, digital only payment method. Alan seemed to
Speaker 2: be proposing an alternative to it.
Speaker 4: When people hear digital gold, especially today, some people think
Speaker 4: about bitcoin because it's often referenced as digital gold.
Speaker 2: This is Tommy Honan, an analyst at Australian cryptocurrency exchange
Speaker 2: platform swift X. He's from Brisbane and we meet when
Speaker 2: he comes to Sydney for a conference. I want to
Speaker 2: know what digital gold was. Was it cryptocurrency? Is this
Speaker 2: where investors money could have got to I send Tommy
Speaker 2: the Digital Gold information memorandum before our face to face interview.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a white paper where Alan proposes his
Speaker 2: methodology and what problem he's attempting to solve with his
Speaker 2: gold bank concept, and something about it instantly strikes Tommy.
Speaker 4: I believe that the project white paper itself lends itself
Speaker 4: directly from what a crypto white paper would look like,
Speaker 4: our blockchain project would look like.
Speaker 2: The blockchain is central to how cryptocurrency operates. Essentially, it's
Speaker 2: a way of recording every transaction anyone makes through crypto.
Speaker 4: Blockchain gives us the ultimate transparency. Every transaction that goes
Speaker 4: on chain is tracked. It is something that is filed
Speaker 4: essentially in a ledger, in a book of transactions that
Speaker 4: can be available on chain and visible to everyone at
Speaker 4: any time.
Speaker 2: Alan's own idea echoed this, as he.
Speaker 1: Declared nothing could be more transparent than this.
Speaker 2: Tommy also found that Allan's reasoning was quite similar to
Speaker 2: the fears that led to the creation of cryptocurrency.
Speaker 4: The world was on fire in terms of global markets.
Speaker 4: We just see in the GFC kind of play out
Speaker 4: thanks for failing. The Fiat currency system was under a
Speaker 4: lot of strain. You know, you would have heard about
Speaker 4: bank runs happening across the globe. I know people that
Speaker 4: are definitely in that camp where they don't want to
Speaker 4: hold money in the banks. At that time, the original
Speaker 4: use case was, yeah, we don't trust anyone, so we
Speaker 4: want to create our own currency. We're not kind of
Speaker 4: self costody it as well, so no one nobody in
Speaker 4: the world can get access to my money, and the
Speaker 4: banks can collapse, the governments can collapse, but my value
Speaker 4: is still safe. So that's where it started. That's not
Speaker 4: where we are today.
Speaker 2: And maybe that fear that everything could collapse around you
Speaker 2: did make Allen look at gold as a safe investment.
Speaker 4: Gold as an investment class is kind of almost prehistoric
Speaker 4: for some people. I guess it is an order demographic
Speaker 4: type of investment.
Speaker 2: You're saying that the digital version is almost is essentially
Speaker 2: like having like a bar of gold kind of at
Speaker 2: the bottom of your bed, but it's being held almost
Speaker 2: digitally somewhere.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, it's it's not great practice told pull
Speaker 4: in underneath your bed I like to put but it is.
Speaker 4: I guess that's the reality of it.
Speaker 2: So to recap, cryptocurrency started out because its early users
Speaker 2: deeply distrusted governments and banks. They wanted to store their
Speaker 2: wealth in crypto, safe from the financial woes of the world.
Speaker 2: At the time Allan was selling digital gold. Very few
Speaker 2: people had even heard of cryptocurrency. One bitcoin was worth
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty US dollars and now it's worth
Speaker 2: sixty seven thousand US dollars. There were only five hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty digital currencies operating back in twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 2: now there's more than three thousand as it's all become
Speaker 2: more mainstream.
Speaker 4: Absolutely a niche tech that not many of the average
Speaker 4: people would have been involved with. In twenty fifteen, the
Speaker 4: market was a lot different than how it is today.
Speaker 4: Big Kind was worried about two hundred and fifty dollars. Today,
Speaker 4: I think at the time of recording it's about sixty
Speaker 4: seven thousand US. But there was about five hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty digital currencies back in twenty fifteen. There's three thousand
Speaker 4: plus today, and the entire crypto market was only worthd
Speaker 4: about four billion. I think we're just shy of two
Speaker 4: and a half trillion. At the time of recording, it
Speaker 4: was a much different world even back in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: It's less than you know, nine years ago, but it
Speaker 4: was a completely different world back then.
Speaker 2: As Tommy was pouring over all the information I'd sent
Speaker 2: to him before our chat, he spotted a glaring issue,
Speaker 2: a sign that Digital gold Standard had a problem and
Speaker 2: was never really going to go anywhere. He brings it
Speaker 2: to my attention.
Speaker 4: For our currency to be truly digital, it needs to
Speaker 4: be built in the cloud, needs to be built on chain,
Speaker 4: needs to be built within a block So I guess
Speaker 4: we have no evidence at this point that actually that
Speaker 4: project itself was built on chain.
Speaker 2: And while I've looked, I haven't been able to find
Speaker 2: any evidence of a blockchain transaction happening through Allen's Digital
Speaker 2: gold Standard.
Speaker 4: It is quite an interesting case, and there is question
Speaker 4: marks around whether it actually was built on chain or not.
Speaker 4: Without that address, it's virtually impossible to find out and
Speaker 4: to track where the value was coming from, whether specific
Speaker 4: digital gold tokens were being minted or not. That is
Speaker 4: almost impossible, like I said, to track until you have
Speaker 4: the blockchain that it was potentially built on, if it's
Speaker 4: bitcoind if it's ethereum Selana, whatever blockchain it was.
Speaker 2: Despite this glaring floor in Allen's vision, Tommy says there
Speaker 2: was something to what he was selling. Other cryptocurrencies have
Speaker 2: been set up back on the value of gold.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was innovative at the time. You fast forward
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, we have projects like this kind of everywhere. Today.
Speaker 4: We have tokens that are backed by track the price
Speaker 4: of gold, and they're kind of quote unquote derivatives of gold.
Speaker 2: I have one final question for Tommy, why would Alan
Speaker 2: set this company up in the Cayman Islands.
Speaker 4: Cama Islands is seen as one of the most conducive
Speaker 4: environments or geographies for innovation. They allow more things to
Speaker 4: happen where. Things you can do in the Cayman Islands
Speaker 4: you can't do in Australia because the regulations won't potentially
Speaker 4: allow you or it hasn't been thought of yet. And
Speaker 4: then the tax heaven kind of elements that you've mentioned
Speaker 4: as well, cost of business, cost of running businesses in
Speaker 4: those areas, they are generally cheaper as well.
Speaker 2: So maybe Allan had something. It wasn't perfect, but it
Speaker 2: could have maybe worked.
Speaker 4: Maybe.
Speaker 2: Despite what Tommy says about the advantages of basing your
Speaker 2: business in the Cayman Islands, they're not really renowned for
Speaker 2: their transparency. When I look into Digital gold Standard, I
Speaker 2: find one reference buried in a one thousand page document
Speaker 2: on the Cayman Islands Gazette. Digital gold Standard is listed
Speaker 2: alongside thousands of other businesses that the island's regulator struck
Speaker 2: off in twenty nineteen because of unpaid administrative fees. I
Speaker 2: track down a document that says Digital gold Standard was
Speaker 2: registered in twenty fifteen when Alan started sprooking the idea
Speaker 2: to investors. Alan's wife, Mary Netcalf, is listed as the
Speaker 2: sole remaining director of the business. Digital gold Standard only
Speaker 2: had a registered share capital of forty one thousand Cayman
Speaker 2: Islands dollars, which is about seventy four thousand Ausie dollars.
Speaker 2: Suggests that Allan's lofty goals of raising eight million dollars
Speaker 2: didn't happen. This document also confirms that Digital gold Standard
Speaker 2: had been shut down in November twenty nineteen. What I
Speaker 2: haven't been able to do is track down anyone who
Speaker 2: actually invested in this Digital gold scheme. But Warren Bardon,
Speaker 2: a Western Australian farmer, comes to the rescue the.
Speaker 1: Right further money. He started selling digital gold standardshaws.
Speaker 2: You might remember I spoke to Warren in episode four
Speaker 2: when I visited Geraldton. So you bought into this digital goal.
Speaker 4: I didn't go into that.
Speaker 3: I'd put enough into it the Metcalf idea, and I
Speaker 3: wasn't going to put any more.
Speaker 2: But Warren's late father, Vaughan did. I didn't even know
Speaker 2: for sure that anyone had actually invested in Allan's gold
Speaker 2: venture until now. Vaughan Bardon has recently passed away, and
Speaker 2: I'm actually speaking to Warren from his father's home as
Speaker 2: he's still sorting out his dad's estate, including looking after
Speaker 2: all the cattle left behind.
Speaker 5: I think he trusted it a little bit more than me.
Speaker 4: Why do you say that he put did you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Warren invested twenty thousand dollars, so Vaughan Bardon handed
Speaker 2: over more than that. Vaughan did it believing hoping that
Speaker 2: his kids, like Warren and his sister his grandkids, would
Speaker 2: be set up for life. I know that because he
Speaker 2: registered some of the shares in their names. Vaughan Bardon
Speaker 2: died still not knowing what had happened to his investment,
Speaker 2: the investment he made into both Safe Worlds and Digital
Speaker 2: gold Standard. Are you okay with us maybe taking a
Speaker 2: few photos of these documents. Up until now, I haven't
Speaker 2: actually seen a Digital Gold shareholder certificate, but Warren has
Speaker 2: found one among his father's things, Digital gold Standard incorporated
Speaker 2: under the laws of the Cayman Islands. It reads it's
Speaker 2: the fortieth share certificate that was issued, so at least
Speaker 2: thirty nine people invested before Vaughan Bardon. Right at the
Speaker 2: top is a dollar sign in a circle that looks
Speaker 2: like a weird take on the bitcoin symbol, which is
Speaker 2: a bee combined with a dollar sign. I've posted the
Speaker 2: certificate up on the news dot com dot a U
Speaker 2: website if you want to look for yourself. When my
Speaker 2: producer Nina Young sees the piece of paper, her mind
Speaker 2: is made up. Now that I've seen a certificate, the
Speaker 2: Digital gold doesn't exist.
Speaker 6: Mm.
Speaker 2: Looks fake.
Speaker 3: That's the most fake certificate I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: As crazy as all this gold stuff is, there's something
Speaker 2: else Alan kept hidden from shareholders over the years. Safe
Speaker 2: Wards had also got mixed up with another notorious tax haven,
Speaker 2: the British Virgin Islands, also based in the Caribbean. The
Speaker 2: Virgin Islands has half the population of the Caymans, and
Speaker 2: it's actually ranked as the best tax haven. The Cayman
Speaker 2: Islands comes in second and Bermuda comes in third place.
Speaker 2: There's a strange correlation between tax havens and beautiful beaches.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure why. In twenty eighteen, Alan's investors believed
Speaker 2: that they'd found proof of a money trail that ended
Speaker 2: at the British Virgin Islands. Years earlier, Alan had registered
Speaker 2: two businesses there, IBS BVII Limited and IBS Shareholders Holding colimited.
Speaker 2: The IBS part stands for Internet Business Systems, but when
Speaker 2: I hear this, I think of another abbreviation for IBS,
Speaker 2: irritable bowel syndrome. Perhaps an unfortunate acronym choice there by allan. Anyway,
Speaker 2: investors believed their money had been transferred to these companies
Speaker 2: in the British Virgin Islands without their knowledge or consent.
Speaker 2: Here's an email a group of investors sent to Safforlds
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen. As their outrage grew.
Speaker 7: The shareholders are aware that in twenty ten, a share
Speaker 7: exchange of sixty six million, six hundred and seventy four
Speaker 7: thousand and twenty three shares took place in the USA.
Speaker 7: The shares in Safe World Internet TV, Inc. An unregistered company,
Speaker 7: were exchanged for IBS Inc. Shares, a bankrupt company. The
Speaker 7: shares exchanged were then transmitted to IBS Shareholdings Co. Limited
Speaker 7: of the British Virgin Islands. This transaction is illegitimate and
Speaker 7: thus invalid, and.
Speaker 2: Going back through my files, I dig out old emails
Speaker 2: Allen sent to investors in twenty twelve which support the
Speaker 2: idea of a link to the Virgin Islands. He wrote
Speaker 2: he'd reached an agreement with investors to transfer their shares
Speaker 2: into the IBS business for tax reasons.
Speaker 1: The shares will be held in trust until Safe World's
Speaker 1: Television Inc. Is listed and the shares can be sold.
Speaker 1: If they were issued now, it is most likely that
Speaker 1: the value of the shares would be taxable in the
Speaker 1: hands of the recipient. A British Virgin Islands corporate da
Speaker 1: has been established.
Speaker 2: Could this be it? As Safe World's never went public,
Speaker 2: does that mean the shares and therefore the money is
Speaker 2: still there in that trust? A literal pot of gold
Speaker 2: locked up in a company called IBS, which is registered
Speaker 2: in another opaque island, tax haven, on the other side
Speaker 2: of the world. This feels like a pretty amazing moment.
Speaker 2: But straight away I'm thinking what does this mean for
Speaker 2: the six hundred people hoping to see their money again?
Speaker 2: Because how are all these Australian shareholders, especially the ones
Speaker 2: in places like Garyalton, going to navigate the tricky processes
Speaker 2: in the British Virgin Islands to recover their money? And
Speaker 2: what if I'm wrong? So I dig deeper. Alan started
Speaker 2: IBS BVII Limited in nineteen ninety nine, the same year
Speaker 2: he had his epiphany where he discovered the law of
Speaker 2: thought buried in the Bible. This seems important because Alan
Speaker 2: appears to have kept this company seek it with no
Speaker 2: mention to shareholders. He'd already started a business in the
Speaker 2: Caribbean Sea years earlier when they were giving him their money.
Speaker 2: Another company was then registered in the British Virgin Islands
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, this one called IBS Shareholders Holding Co Limited.
Speaker 2: This lines up with when Alan claims to have struck
Speaker 2: an agreement with his investors. For a moment, I think
Speaker 2: I may have stumbled across the final resting place of
Speaker 2: the missing forty nine million. But as I keep skimming
Speaker 2: over these documents, I'm disappointed. Both companies were dissolved in
Speaker 2: July twenty twenty three by pure coincidence. That was a
Speaker 2: week before I first contacted Mary Alan's wife trying to
Speaker 2: find out more about him as part of this investigation.
Speaker 2: So if there was any money still in those businesses,
Speaker 2: where could it have gone. It's not a simple case
Speaker 2: of X marking the spot. Unfortunately, the fact he.
Speaker 6: Set up in the British Virgin Islands is interesting to
Speaker 6: me because I've traced money to the Camans before and
Speaker 6: I had bank records. But when I was comparing, like,
Speaker 6: what's the benefit of setting up a company in the
Speaker 6: British Version Islands versus the Caymans. British Version Islands, you
Speaker 6: don't have to disclose who owns what, and it seemed
Speaker 6: like it was a much greater hurdle than even in
Speaker 6: the Caymans.
Speaker 2: This is Leah Wheatolta. She's an ex FBI agent turned
Speaker 2: private detective. Leah runs her own podcast called Data Sleuth,
Speaker 2: where she specializes in following money trails, which is how
Speaker 2: I heard about her. She has long dark hair and
Speaker 2: glasses and listens patiently as I tell her what I
Speaker 2: know about the late Alan Metcalf. The private detective is
Speaker 2: right about the hurdles I had to jump over to
Speaker 2: find out information, any information at all about companies and
Speaker 2: the British Virgin Islands, and why it's so popular for
Speaker 2: businessmen and women trying to keep a low profile Without
Speaker 2: knowing what the company is. It's impossible to find out
Speaker 2: who's behind a business in Theridish Virgin Islands. You can't
Speaker 2: just run a director search based on someone's name, something
Speaker 2: that I usually rely on for many of my investigations
Speaker 2: in Australia. But luckily I know about Alan's two companies.
Speaker 2: I managed to find two documents on the companies. Those
Speaker 2: are the documents I was looking at earlier. They don't
Speaker 2: say who directs these businesses. I'm certain these are Allan's companies,
Speaker 2: though they match with the company names shareholders found and
Speaker 2: also the US law firm that Alan used sometimes, Dwayne
Speaker 2: Morris was listed as being involved in starting the companies.
Speaker 2: When I tell Leah, the ex FBI agent, about the
Speaker 2: Allan Metcalf case, she tells me.
Speaker 6: This it may even be that he set up businesses
Speaker 6: there because it's confidential, but the money isn't necessarily in
Speaker 6: the British versions.
Speaker 2: It's like a gut punch after feeling like I was
Speaker 2: so close to the end of the rainbow. Now it
Speaker 2: seems that was nothing but naive optimism, So the money
Speaker 2: might not be there after all, and possibly it never was. Effectively,
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm back to square one. Frustrated, I
Speaker 2: decide to pick lee as brains on what I should
Speaker 2: do next. Where do I start? I've got this, you know,
Speaker 2: deceased man with forty nine million dollars to his name,
Speaker 2: and a lot of investors who are wondering where the
Speaker 2: money's are gone. So where do I start? Where would
Speaker 2: you start?
Speaker 6: All of this tracing money typically comes from bank statements,
Speaker 6: credit card statements, and so my experience of tracing money
Speaker 6: is really broad because it all comes from the same
Speaker 6: type of information typically, and it's the same whether it's
Speaker 6: in a divorce or some sort of partnership dispute, or
Speaker 6: some sort of con artist criminal case, civil case. I
Speaker 6: think what makes kind of what you're doing interesting is
Speaker 6: that you don't have access to that information. So trace
Speaker 6: money in the way that I'm talking about that's what
Speaker 6: you would need, some sort of lawsuit from the victims
Speaker 6: or a lot enforcement agency. However, all is not lost
Speaker 6: because the same thing. You can kind of work these
Speaker 6: things backwards. So maybe I'm probably getting ahead of your questions,
Speaker 6: but maybe you know you don't have bank statements credit
Speaker 6: card statements to work from. But I have thought through
Speaker 6: several ways that you can kind of back into that information.
Speaker 6: So I realized some of these things may not be
Speaker 6: available because it happens so long ago. But I think
Speaker 6: it would be really interesting if any of the investors
Speaker 6: still have copies of any of the wires or checks
Speaker 6: that they wrote to him, and to see if they
Speaker 6: got a copy of that canceled check or information from
Speaker 6: the bank that might tell you and them where their
Speaker 6: money was deposited.
Speaker 2: As Lee is talking, I make a note to follow
Speaker 2: up and see if any of the investors I've spoken
Speaker 2: to have got this kind of paperwork. I do know
Speaker 2: some of the investors still have records of their bank transfer.
Speaker 2: When I follow them up, I learned that Alan had
Speaker 2: set up two bank accounts, a Commonwealth Bank account going
Speaker 2: to a Brisbane branch and also a City Bank one
Speaker 2: in California. For American investors.
Speaker 6: Did he have an office. If he had an office,
Speaker 6: did he pay for a lease? If he has a lease,
Speaker 6: can you get a copy of that please?
Speaker 2: I keep making notes. Alan briefly had offices in Irvine, California,
Speaker 2: but the landlord won't tell me anything. Later I would
Speaker 2: have more luck with Alan's Australian landlords. Alan had an
Speaker 2: office in the city center of Brisbane. The owner tells me.
Speaker 8: It looks like metcalf Ibs. Safeworld moved into three hundred
Speaker 8: and twenty Adelaide Street on the twenty ninth of December
Speaker 8: in two thousand and six. They didn't commence paying the
Speaker 8: lease until January twenty fifth, two thousand and seven, due
Speaker 8: to early access incentive. It was a ten desk private
Speaker 8: office with an internal meeting room and reception area. The
Speaker 8: contact on a lot of these records is a Michael
Speaker 8: bertrand I also found a Mary metcalf working for Safeworld's
Speaker 8: Internet television that vacated in around twenty eighteen. I do
Speaker 8: have the bond and lease amounts for these tenants, but
Speaker 8: due to privacy, we were preferred not to disclose those amounts.
Speaker 8: But from what I can see, these were all paid
Speaker 8: in full.
Speaker 2: When I look from Michael bertrand online, I find one
Speaker 2: that could fit the bill. Investors have been searching for
Speaker 2: the accountant of Safe Worlds, wanting to ask this unknown
Speaker 2: person some hard questions. Could this be him? When I
Speaker 2: reach out, though multiple times, he never gets back to me.
Speaker 2: Whoever he is, it doesn't change the fact that Alan's
Speaker 2: Brisbane office was in a good location. It was a
Speaker 2: big office, enough room for ten people to work in there,
Speaker 2: and in an expensive part of the city. The landlord
Speaker 2: says the rent was between six thousand to eight thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a month. That means Alan paid around eighty four
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year, So for the ten years the
Speaker 2: office was rented out, it would have totaled something close
Speaker 2: to a million dollars. Now, that would count for some
Speaker 2: of the money Alan's investors put into the business, but
Speaker 2: not the whole forty nine million dollars, not by a
Speaker 2: long shot. As I feel Leah in on everything I know,
Speaker 2: she points something else.
Speaker 6: Out Pennsylvania, where his business was registered in the States.
Speaker 6: It is a state that is very favorable to like
Speaker 6: privacy and things like that. Interesting proof that you are
Speaker 6: still in business. A lot of times people will set
Speaker 6: up companies in Delaware, and I believe Nevada maybe as well,
Speaker 6: because they will also have some of those like really
Speaker 6: protective you know, you can't find out as much information
Speaker 6: about it. So again it's just like another why set
Speaker 6: up there, especially if you're not from there. It's kind
Speaker 6: of an odd place to set something up.
Speaker 2: Learning all this makes me wonder. Several people have claimed
Speaker 2: that Alan wasn't a fraud, just incombatant and that Safefood
Speaker 2: was just mismanaged. From what Leah is saying, though, it
Speaker 2: seems like Alan was pretty business savvy, like he knew
Speaker 2: exactly what he was doing and then suddenly he died.
Speaker 2: After Alan's death, it seems like his plans started to unravel.
Speaker 2: His wife, Mary had to make sense of what he
Speaker 2: left behind. She was left footing the bill for a
Speaker 2: substantial debt. I put in a freedom of information request
Speaker 2: to the Fair Work On Budsman, an Australian government department
Speaker 2: that deals with workplace disputes. I had no idea what
Speaker 2: I would find if anything, but my request strikes gold.
Speaker 2: I learned that a full time Safeworlds employee had left
Speaker 2: the company but never received their final wages they were
Speaker 2: owed forty one thousand dollars. They'd been trying unsuccessfully for
Speaker 2: three years to recover their lost money while Mary was
Speaker 2: the new boss. In twenty nineteen, they lodged a formal
Speaker 2: complaint with the Fair Work On Budsmen. Safeworlds haven't done
Speaker 2: a single payment after I left, the worker wrote, please
Speaker 2: help me get my unpaid salary. Mary Metcalf told the
Speaker 2: Fair Work On Budsman that her company was experiencing cash
Speaker 2: flow issues and she was trying to sell Safefworld's assets
Speaker 2: to repay them. The matter has since been marked as resolved,
Speaker 2: so presumably this person was paid. Remember Rod McKay, the
Speaker 2: hardcore investor from Geraldton we heard from in the last
Speaker 2: two episodes who recruited four hundred and fifty others from
Speaker 2: his hometown and then sent a string of wild emails
Speaker 2: casting doubt on the whole Irish deal. This might jog
Speaker 2: your memory.
Speaker 9: You have overseen the demise of a fifty million dollar
Speaker 9: company made up predominantly of mum and Dad investors.
Speaker 2: He issued the company a new threat, saying if there
Speaker 2: was no implementation of a marketing strategy for the sale
Speaker 2: of Safe.
Speaker 9: Worlds, a class action may well result.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Charlie Weinbein, an investor from the Netherlands,
Speaker 2: was also getting increasingly desperate. He's the one who tipped
Speaker 2: me off to this scheme in the first place. He
Speaker 2: and his wife put all their spare cash into Safe
Speaker 2: Worlds in twenty thirteen. The Dutchman has been trying for
Speaker 2: a decade to find out what happened and if you'll
Speaker 2: ever see a scent of his missing money. In twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, he decided to engage a lawyer.
Speaker 3: We were having a few beers together with a friend
Speaker 3: of mine who is a lawyer, and I explained him
Speaker 3: the whole situation with Safe world and I said I
Speaker 3: wanted a lawyer to write a letter just to get
Speaker 3: more information, because all I wanted to know is where
Speaker 3: is the money, where is the investment, and what is
Speaker 3: the investment and who are the investors. That's all the
Speaker 3: information that I really wanted to note. But the reaction
Speaker 3: that I got back was, of course, that there was
Speaker 3: no way that I was going to see or hear anything.
Speaker 3: I didn't get any direct answer at all, and that
Speaker 3: says enough for me. That says enough.
Speaker 2: That's not a good sign This lawyer sent off several
Speaker 2: legal letters in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 9: There never has been any proof of investing my client's
Speaker 9: money as promised. My client has now come to a
Speaker 9: point where he no longer accepts any excuse not to
Speaker 9: refund his money. Therefore, I summon you to immediately return
Speaker 9: his invested money of fifty two thousand Australian dollars as
Speaker 9: otherwise we will have no other choice than to take
Speaker 9: you to court.
Speaker 10: Mary replied, this was obviously a startup company with the
Speaker 10: hope of early success, but of course without any guarantee.
Speaker 10: There never were, nor are there funds set aside to
Speaker 10: fulfill such a non existent guarantee.
Speaker 2: Lacking the funds, Charlie did not go to court. He
Speaker 2: doesn't think he'll be getting his money back, but he's
Speaker 2: still fighting. Just a few months after his legal bid
Speaker 2: failed and he received this response from Mary, Charlie reached
Speaker 2: out to me to see if I could help him.
Speaker 2: I met Mary Metcalf at her house in the Flesh
Speaker 2: last episode. But after everything I've now learned, there's so
Speaker 2: much more I want to ask her, so I email
Speaker 2: Mary a long list of questions.
Speaker 10: Dear Miss Cohen in addition to your surprise visit to
Speaker 10: my home and subsequent email, I must tell you that
Speaker 10: I am in no position financially to respond in detail
Speaker 10: to your various interrogations. I frankly have no confidence that
Speaker 10: the facts will be reported fairly and properly. However, I
Speaker 10: do refer you to the details in my previous emails,
Speaker 10: the information I gave to ASEIK, and the reports I
Speaker 10: try to provide to shareholders regularly. Yours, sincerely, Mary metcalf ps.
Speaker 10: There never has been any bank accounts in Cayman or
Speaker 10: British Virgin Islands. The suggestion is just not true and
Speaker 10: very upsetting.
Speaker 2: I wasn't expecting a thesis in return, but wow, this
Speaker 2: response just makes me have more questions. So she says
Speaker 2: she's not in a position financially to respond. Does that
Speaker 2: mean Mary doesn't have any money at all? Does the
Speaker 2: company not have any money? If so, where's the forty
Speaker 2: nine million gone? And she says there are no Cayman
Speaker 2: or Virgin Island bank accounts. I guess what I've found
Speaker 2: proved that the companies were registered there, but not necessarily
Speaker 2: that there were bank accounts set up overseas. So doesn't
Speaker 2: mean the money isn't there either. When I replied to her,
Speaker 2: hoping to at least clarify all of this, she never
Speaker 2: gets back to me. It's really frustrating. I feel like
Speaker 2: I've just been on a big loop. And while I
Speaker 2: have more of an idea of what Allan was up
Speaker 2: to after this line of investigation, still no solid lead
Speaker 2: and what he did with all the money. Investors occasionally
Speaker 2: receive an email from Mary telling them she's still looking
Speaker 2: for buyers and that's all they ever hear about Safe Worlds.
Speaker 2: The most recent one was in January this year. Michael Blake,
Speaker 2: the former footy player who was once one of the
Speaker 2: largest supporters of Safe Worlds, gave the business three hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars of his and his family's fortune. Now he
Speaker 2: thinks it will take a miracle to ever see that again.
Speaker 11: I don't know she's trying to sell, or how she's
Speaker 11: getting her contacts, or if she's going out to meetings
Speaker 11: or whatever. You know, if something happens which will be
Speaker 11: way at a left field, in a miracle, it would
Speaker 11: be it would be nice.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All these years since Alan first made these grand plans,
Speaker 2: Michael is wondering what happened to the secret code he
Speaker 2: talked about that was supposed to revolutionize the world and
Speaker 2: make all the investors rich in the process. You might
Speaker 2: remember him questioning this in the very first episode.
Speaker 11: As far as I understand, he had the algorithm in
Speaker 11: a safety secure box or something in the Cayman Islands
Speaker 11: that was for the protection of the algorithm, and he
Speaker 11: gifted it to charity if something happened to him and
Speaker 11: Mary or whatever. He was very protective of it. He
Speaker 11: always said if it got in the wrong hand, it
Speaker 11: could destroy the world.
Speaker 2: Mary strongly denies this, saying that the source code has
Speaker 2: never been located in the Cayman Islands. But this seems
Speaker 2: to contradict what other investors have heard and what Allan
Speaker 2: himself said. Another investor, Phil Bardon, originally from Geraldon but
Speaker 2: who's now based in Perth, is also feeling frustrated.
Speaker 5: I don't trust many people nowadays. I don't buy shares either.
Speaker 5: There's a lesson that you'll learn.
Speaker 2: Phil remembers Alan telling him something interesting at one of
Speaker 2: the conferences in Perth, Western Australia.
Speaker 5: At this meeting, people are, I think questions and he
Speaker 5: wouldn't answer it. And one stage, I said, okay, if
Speaker 5: I went passes, what happens to the secret he's got?
Speaker 5: And they were told, I'm a thing by Alan Lloyd's
Speaker 5: what that was in a safe somewhere? I see if
Speaker 5: he dies tomorrow, what's going to happen all this information?
Speaker 5: And I was told that, oh, it's in a safe
Speaker 5: in a safe place.
Speaker 10: Did they say where?
Speaker 5: No, didn't say. But it just seems so far fast
Speaker 5: that I questioned it, basically only months after I invested
Speaker 5: the money, because they were saying it's in a safe place,
Speaker 5: and what does that mean?
Speaker 2: A few hours north of Perth in Geralton, Phil's cousin,
Speaker 2: Warren Bondon, is also having his own serious doubts.
Speaker 11: Another thing that worried me when Alan was in Drip
Speaker 11: and he made a statement that the company takes a
Speaker 11: lot of money to kick down. It's taken two hundred
Speaker 11: and fifty thousand dollars a month. He said that in public,
Speaker 11: and I thought, well, it can't be possible.
Speaker 2: Even paying rent and wages. It seems hard to believe
Speaker 2: that Safe Words was costing that much a month. But
Speaker 2: even if Alan had been spending two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a month on the business. That's three million
Speaker 2: dollars a year. So in the ten years he was
Speaker 2: trying to develop the software, that's thirty million dollars, So
Speaker 2: still a deficit of at least nineteen million dollars. Where
Speaker 2: did the rest of it go? Alan had everything planned out,
Speaker 2: registering offshore businesses, navigating tricky, non transparent tax jurisdictions, now
Speaker 2: being prime offers real estate in the heart of a
Speaker 2: major Australian city. Everything had been thought through, everything except
Speaker 2: his succession plans. It got Warren and a few others thinking.
Speaker 1: People said, he's probably over there and enjoying his money,
Speaker 1: over in somehwland somewhere.
Speaker 2: To be honest, the first time I heard Warren say this,
Speaker 2: I kind of dismissed it. Alan was dead, or at
Speaker 2: least he had a funeral. But now, after following the
Speaker 2: trail of the missing forty nine million to the British
Speaker 2: Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, I feel like I
Speaker 2: know less about it than when I started. I find
Speaker 2: myself going back to what Warren said about Alan living
Speaker 2: large on an island and asking myself, could it be possible?
Speaker 2: Is Alan really still alive? And has he got his
Speaker 2: money with him. That's next time on the Missing forty
Speaker 2: nine million, that.
Speaker 12: Did right back and said, I hope it's going to
Speaker 12: be an open casket, And people are like, that's pretty
Speaker 12: heavy thing to say. But now looking back at it,
Speaker 12: he probably had every right to ask, because I don't know.
Speaker 12: No one knows exactly if he's one hundred percent that
Speaker 12: there's no bed, no destiny, you have proven to any
Speaker 12: investors anything like that.
Speaker 11: A couple of people just say, are you sure he's dead?
Speaker 11: Should we go and dig up the coffin.
Speaker 13: You have to be extremely clever and you have to
Speaker 13: have a lot of discipline to be able to fake
Speaker 13: your own death, because you know, you've got to cut
Speaker 13: everything out of your life, even family. You have to
Speaker 13: start again somewhere under a new assumed identity, and once
Speaker 13: you do that, there's always a risk.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. A new episode is coming out weekly.
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Speaker 2: Do you know more'n touched through our dedicated tip inbox
Speaker 2: Missing Millions at news dot com dot Au or contact
Speaker 2: me directly on Alex dot Turner, Dash Cohen at news
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Speaker 2: to get my details. I'm your host, Alex Turner Cohen.
Speaker 2: Nina Young is the executive producer, sound design and editing
Speaker 2: by Tiffany Dimack. Our editorial director is Dan Box. Grant
Speaker 2: McAvaney is our legal advisor, and Kerry Warren is the
Speaker 2: editor of News dot com DODAU. Special thanks to our
Speaker 2: voice actors Claudia Popowski, Andrew Backhouse, Tiffany Dimack, John ty Burton,
Speaker 2: and James Chunk. And thanks to David Marchant for his
Speaker 2: assistance on this investigation.